Rating: 
Summary: Not THAT bad!!
Review: I had to interject that I've read lots of far worse contemporary fiction. The novel does make it clear that the kids were born in the late 50s (there are references to their 70s high school and 40-ish current age) and, in our mobile society, it's entirely plausible that an independent computer wizard could catch a commuter jet on the weekend. I agree the father isn't a well-developed character, but such sadism does exist. Maybe as a Nina-like character (an editor who loves carriage houses), I could relate more than most. Not the best book I've ever read, but I had no trouble finishing; definitely not the worst out there..
Rating: 
Summary: Back to my shrink
Review: I have kept up with Ms. Beattie's career since 1977. I've read everything she's written . . . up to now. I was unable to finish THE DOCTOR'S HOUSE and it's taken me a while to figure out why. Beattie's voice in this novel is so bland and noncommittal that almost every sentence challenges the reader to continue. I got about 75 pages into the book and still didn't know the characters well, or even some of their names, let alone what they looked like. I didn't even know what the novel itself was about by page 75 or why I should care enough about these characters to continue on reading. Also missing here is the author's famous wit and her keen observations of contemporary life. Most telling of all, this novel really highlights Beattie's lack of dialog skill. Her characters speak as if they know they're in a novel. Nothing here smacks of reality. The book is an extraordinary bore.That said, I still remain a fan. Her last book of stories, PERFECT RECALL, was nearly faultless. If you are starting here with Ann Beattie, don't. You will get all the wrong impressions. Try her stories before moving to her novels. There, she excells.
Rating: 
Summary: NOT 'THE GREAT AMERICAN NOVEL'
Review: I kind of had to force myself to read the whole book.Story told by a mother, daughter and son. The part as told by the daughter is confusing...very difficult to keep track of all her brothers love affairs. Story was all over the place.The part told by the mother is better, but not great.The son's story is more of the confusion that was in the daughter's story.Both adult children have distanced themselves from their unhappy, alcoholic mother and their insecure, unfaithful father. The father terrorized his family and the mother withdrew into her bottle and bedroom. The brother and sister clung to each other and were very close.Glad when I finally finished this book.
Rating:
Summary: I Can't Believe I Read the Whole Thing
Review: I read Beattie's novel because I knew the reputation of her short stories and because I'd tried to read three books by other authors already this summer and found them too dreadful to finish. Unfortunately, I wasn't any more pleased with THE DOCTOR'S HOUSE; I think I kept going because I just didn't want to give up again. The dialogue rings false, the psychological basis of the plot feels familiar and didactic, and while the book seems to encourage us to feel that it's building toward climax or at least epiphany, it doesn't. The cast of minor characters feels random and, well, very minor--most so minor I found myself wondering why many of them had been included, and a large part of the tension seems meant to center around the character of Patty, but in the end I just don't know what I'm supposed to think about her. As for the crazy, abusive, doctor father, I didn't buy him at all, and I felt relieved he was dead, otherwise I'd have had to read his side of the story, too.
Rating: 
Summary: Not bedtime reading
Review: I started reading "The Doctor's House" as bedtime reading but soon realized that the book required real brainpower to appreciate, more than I could give it in the drowsy state that seems to suffice for many other contemporary novels. There's genius at work in the author's technical accomplishment here, bringing to life on the page three consciousnesses that are as articulate and complex as actual complicated humans (blindspots and warts included). This novel is narrated just as much as your own life is--which is to say zilch. In this interrelated triptych, as in life, you're on your own to "get it"; Beattie leaves it to you so see as far as you can and to construe as much as you can. The book serves as a model of what fiction can do far better than any of the other arts--probing the inner reality (thoughts, emotions, perceptions, idiom) of its characters. Norman Mailer wrote years ago that an author couldn't create a character more intelligent or complex than he himself was. Thank goodness Beattie has the capacity to create such compelling characters. It's up to readers to meet her at that level of sophisticated perception.
Rating:
Summary: Not bedtime reading
Review: I started reading "The Doctor's House" as bedtime reading but soon realized that the book required real brainpower to appreciate, more than I could give it in the drowsy state that seems to suffice for many other contemporary novels. There's genius at work in the author's technical accomplishment here, bringing to life on the page three consciousnesses that are as articulate and complex as actual complicated humans (blindspots and warts included). This novel is narrated just as much as your own life is--which is to say zilch. In this interrelated triptych, as in life, you're on your own to "get it"; Beattie leaves it to you so see as far as you can and to construe as much as you can. The book serves as a model of what fiction can do far better than any of the other arts--probing the inner reality (thoughts, emotions, perceptions, idiom) of its characters. Norman Mailer wrote years ago that an author couldn't create a character more intelligent or complex than he himself was. Thank goodness Beattie has the capacity to create such compelling characters. It's up to readers to meet her at that level of sophisticated perception.
Rating:
Summary: Diagnosis: Boring
Review: I suppose I should begin by admitting I've never read anything by Ann Beattie before. I was drawn to this novel because it promises one of those he said/she said type narratives that can be so compelling, ideally multifaceted. A sister begins narrating the story of her brother, a sex addict who has systematically begun contacting girls from high school about ten or so years down the line. The mother and the brother himself chime in to continue the story, which grows to reveal a physically abusive father, the title doctor. With all the awards Beattie has stacked, it seemed like a safe bet.
Instead, however, the book defines mediocrity. The characters are one-dimensional, the setting nonexistent, the plot overinflated, and the writing flat and lifeless. The only thing preventing me from calling this the worst book I've ever read is that I said that already and it might affect my credibility as a pathetic online reviewer.
Although there must be hundreds of characters in this book, only three really matter, the three narrators: Nina, the sister, the mother (there're so many minor little characters in this book I forget the mother's name), and Andrew, the brother. They are really the same character, however, since no distinguishing markers of voice or personality quirks mark their three separate sections of the novel. Furthermore, each is a perfectly rendered cliché. Nina is the depressed widow traumatized by her husband's death; the mother is the alcoholic doctor's wife; and Andrew is the abused son become a sex addict. None of the three narrators is insightful or compelling; you don't get the push-and-pull of the good he said/she said story, where inevitably you're supposed to be compelled to "take sides." Instead, you really can't wait for any of them to stop blithering. In Nina's section, you are quickly baffled as to why this woman actually cares about this nasty brother of hers. In the mother's section, Beattie's efforts at providing "explanations" for the bits and pieces of the family's past Nina has already recounted quickly tire you with their lack of complexity. With Andrew, you marvel that anyone could be so completely in denial about his own behavior. Beattie has no compassion for nor understanding of any of these characters. They are chess pieces in a creative writing exercise, and it shows.
Furthermore, although Beattie constantly mentions the Cambridge environment, she does little more than that, as if simply mentioning it were somehow enough to create a sense of place. Again, there's that feeling that these characters are chess pieces, none of them products of any particular time or place, despite references to generally repressive post-WWII commandments for women made to supply the place of true characterization when it comes to several frustrated housewives and unwed mothers in the story. Other than this transparent technique, all you get is much coffee drinking, and a series of generic "bars" where the characters collect to talk, and talk, and then talk some more. About the only place outside this vacuum is the mother's girlhood bedroom, which Beattie pauses in the parade of chatting to describe in some detail. But these are people who don't really work, or live in actual homes.
Other than to describe the mother's room, however, Beattie's writing seems, at best, grammatically correct. I was so starved for a cleverly twisted line, or anything remotely resembling a visual, I actually found myself happy over this: "My father looked at things so squarely, everything he saw was framed in negativity." Until, of course, I mulled it over some and realized how little squareness and negativity have in common. The dialogue is unimaginable. Beattie must have had a uniquely happy childhood to have such a poor imagination when it comes to what an abusive parent sounds like, or, for that matter, acts like.
At the heart of the problems with the novel is, of course, the plot, which is sketchy, at best, loosely held together by the concept that childhood abuse always makes for good drama. You marry a doctor because that's what you're supposed to do if you were born to a certain generation, and, when he turns out to be a philandering egomaniac, you drink. The children suffer. Somehow, however, in the hands of a good writer, such plots can be brought to life (Ann Tyler's The Amateur Marriage is a much better example of this sort of family, although it doesn't stoop to narrating physical abuse to create drama). But add to the triteness of the plot an obsession with high school, and you might as well be calling up Shannen Doherty to pose on your cover. Here is the rationale for following brother Andrew around as he looks up girls from high school to sleep with: "Because you maintain a real connection with those people, the same way you never really disconnect from your family. You can't renounce the people who defined your adolescence any more than you can banish family members." If you believe that, then maybe the cavalcade of Jenny-this and Patty-that and Diane-whomever that Andrew digs up will amuse you. Maybe, if Beattie had put together some plausible picture of a small neighborhood or particularly claustrophobic high school, I'd be willing to contemplate the idea (she doesn't; I've never seen anyone place so much importance on high school without ever going into the building). If you're not defined by four years of your whole life, however, you'll just be bored to death.
Rating: 
Summary: Thoughtful study of compulsive sexual behavior
Review: In my opinion the central subject of this book is the compulsive sexual behavior of Andrew, the narrator of the novel's third section. The outlines of his activity are described by his sister, Nina, in the first section; in the second their mother describes what life what like at home when they were growing up with her and their father, the doctor of the book's title, who had many extramarital affairs. Yes, in some ways this is a grim topic, and all three narrators seem very unhappy, though Andrew perceives this perhaps less fully than the other two. But the structure of the book, with the intersecting perspectives, is intriguing, and I for one wanted to start over again as soon as I finished to see whether Nina's opening narrative was compromised by what I'd learned from the other perspectives. I think this could be a darkly fascinating book for anyone interested in why some men are sexually compulsive and the effect that has on the women in their lives--sisters as well as girlfriends or wives.
Rating:
Summary: Thoughtful study of compulsive sexual behavior
Review: In my opinion the central subject of this book is the compulsive sexual behavior of Andrew, the narrator of the novel's third section. The outlines of his activity are described by his sister, Nina, in the first section; in the second their mother describes what life what like at home when they were growing up with her and their father, the doctor of the book's title, who had many extramarital affairs. Yes, in some ways this is a grim topic, and all three narrators seem very unhappy, though Andrew perceives this perhaps less fully than the other two. But the structure of the book, with the intersecting perspectives, is intriguing, and I for one wanted to start over again as soon as I finished to see whether Nina's opening narrative was compromised by what I'd learned from the other perspectives. I think this could be a darkly fascinating book for anyone interested in why some men are sexually compulsive and the effect that has on the women in their lives--sisters as well as girlfriends or wives.
Rating:
Summary: Vague and meandering
Review: It's a three generation family story, told from three different points of view by a sister, a mother and a brother. At the beginning the brother is looking up his old high school girl friends, having sex with them, and telling his sister about it. He's still doing the same thing at the end. The mother is alcoholic and the sister is depressed. This is all the fault of the terrible father.
Beattie takes rather to much to heart the disclaimer at the front of the book that it is not intended to have any "resemblance to actual events,locales or persons."
There's a certain vagueness about everything that I found irritating. Much is made of the fact that the father is a doctor (which makes him arrogant and a bad father and a bad husband) but we never understand what his specialty is. The mother's problems are laid to the oppression of women in the fifties, so time frame would be important, but we are never told what date the action is taking place in. The only work any character does that is described in detail is that of Nina, who is a copy editor. The characters (except for the nasty doctor) can spend very little time working because they're always travelling to meet lovers drinking coffee or wine or eating out, or in pychotherapy. We are never told how much anything costs.
None of this would matter in a short story but by the end of 280 pages is gets tedious. Beattie should read Balzac or Sue Grafton.
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